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Coup

In Venezuela, Waiting for the Coup

From Anfibia

There is an ominous scent to the air in Caracas, writes Marco Teruggi in Anfibia. Although Vatican-mediated talks between the government and the right-wing opposition seem to have for the moment headed off efforts to resurrect a referendum to remove leftist Nicolas Maduro from power, Teruggi finds violent sentiment everywhere: Crowds of middle-class conservatives jeer their own leaders for being too conciliatory, while the Chavista left girds for street warfare, while in the shadows, industrialists and the regime joust with economic sabotage and counterinsurgency.

“They don’t have much time left in office, very little. They’ll see.”

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Behind the Scenes of a Stagemanaged War

From Al-Akhbar

The Saudi war in Yemen was launched by a tiny clique within the royal family, ignoring the wishes of many high-level princes and catching the Saud family’s allies in the other gulf monarchies by surprise, writes Fouad Ibrahim in Al-Akhbar. The giant Saudi military’s remarkable incompetence in the fighting so far has exposed the kingdom’s weakness, as well as its disquieting links to Al-Qaeda allies who control parts of Yemen, Ibrahim writes.

"Decisive Storm" was a home cooked Saudi-American plot.

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Home, Defeated, a General Finds Unwanted Welcome

From El Faro

Deported from his refuge in the United States like a common criminal, handcuffed and loaded onto a plane, the Salvadoran general and onetime chief torturer Vides Casanova returns to the country he fled–to face, for a brief moment at least, his victims.

The last time the surgeon Juan Romagoza saw General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova’s face was at a month-long trial in 2002 in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the end of which the general was ordered to pay $54 million in damages for allowing the torture of Juan and other Salvadorans.

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Saudi’s Choice: the Menace of Democracy, or the Shi’ite Devils?

From Orient XXI

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have at long last shown their hand and formally seized the capital city that they have controlled for many months. In the face of this improbable victory, Francois Burgat wonders why Yemen’s neighbors in Saudi Arabia seem to have suddenly come to terms with a “Shi’ite” regime on their southern border. Within the country, religious sectarianism between Sunnis and Shi’ites, as well as regional rifts, threaten war.

On the evening of January 20th, in an extensive speech, Abdelmalik al-Houthi, long dismissed as the provincial leader of the decade-old “Zaydi Shi’ite rebellion in the north

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Sometimes They Come Back

From Anfibia

Their daughters and sons, young leftist activists from high schools and colleges across Argentina, were tortured and murdered by the military dictatorship of the 1970s, their bodies usually thrown out of airplanes into the Atlantic. The mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo stood in silent vigil for decades in memory of their disappeared children. This summer, the original Grandmother of the Plaza found her grandson, stolen from his mother’s arms on the night of her murder.

The longest trip of Estela Barnes de Carlotto's life started that winter afternoon, in August of 1978, with a summons to go to the Isidro Casanova police station.

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Burned Villages, Uprooted Olive Groves: Egypt Army in Sinai

From Al Akhbar

Violent reprisals against civilians. Mass burnings of houses and automobiles. Local journalists imprisoned and their relatives shot dead. In the Sinai, Egyptian security forces are engaged in a small war against the local population.

On Saturday morning, the Egyptian army took control of the central telecom building in al-Arish and cut off all landlines, mobile phones, and Internet communications in this governorate of North Sinai.

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Tariq Ramadan: Egypt’s Only Solution, A National Civic Alliance

Tarek Gafawy, Roz El-Yusef, August 8, 2013

From Le Parisien

Grandson of the assassinated founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan is a prominent Swiss academic and intellectual, particularly concerned with the role of Muslims in the West. In the following interview, he contemplates the fate of the movement his grandfather founded now that the Egyptian military has opted for violent repression following last month’s coup.

Le Parisien: Are you surprised what has been happening in Egypt?

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For Egypt’s Rulers, the Copts Suddenly Matter

Coptic cemetery, old Cairo. Photo CC: Scott D. Haddow

From Mada Masr

The Egyptian state has long denied the existence of widespread discrimination and violence against the country’s Coptic Christian minority, a reality incompatible with the nationalist myth of a single, united Egyptian people. In Mada Masr, academic Paul Sedra writes that the Copts have suddenly become the bloody shirt being waved at Western governments by the country’s military rulers and their supporters.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry released a statement this past Thursday that was entirely without precedent, and yet it received practically no media attention.

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That’s the Kind of Sharia I’m Talking About!

From Al Masri al Youm

For one female writer at Egypt’s most prominent private daily, Egypt coup leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s virile image is so overwhelming that she wrote this column, which shocked many of the paper’s readers with its unusual tone and imagery. The general had called on coup supporters to rally to crush terrorists today: here is Ghada Sherif’s eager response.

Since it's el-Sisi who's asking, we are all going to go out on the streets! To be honest, he doesn't need to ask us or order us to do anything....a wink of one of those eyes, or a snap of his fingers and we will all answer the call. Egyptians are in love with this man! If he wants to complete his st

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Tamarod: A Linguistic Riddle

From Culture et Politique Arabes

Linguist Yves Gonzalez-Quijano asks: Why does the name of Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest group roll so strangely off the Arabic tongue? The answer, he suggests, is that the name and the concept were imported from English; they ring like an advertising agency slogan. What language does Tamarod really speak?

It sure is hard to figure out what exactly is going on in Egypt! Especially since the media drowns out anything that doesn't fit into the mainstream narrative.

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